1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to compositions useful for the healing of wounds and the like.
2. Description of the Background Art
The indigenous population of the upper Amazon basin of South America have traditionally used plants and plant products for medicinal purposes. Knowledge gained from such traditional uses of medicinal plants has provided valuable contributions to Western medicine, including the benefits of both curare and quinine.
One material which is utilized medicinally by the Jivaro people of north-central Peru is the sap of the tree Croton lechleri, which is used for treating external cuts, wounds, various abrasions and the like, and internally to treat, for example, ulcers. The red sap of this species has been found to contain the alkaloid, taspine. The hydrochloride salt of taspine is reported to have anti-inflammatory activity. Persinos-Purdue et al., Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences 68: 124-126 (1979).
U.S. Pat. No. 3,694,557 to Persinos points out that taspine is insoluble in a great many conventional vehicles, such as water, alcohol, alkaline solution and the like, but that acid salts of taspine are partially soluble in such vehicles. The Persinos patent also describes the anti-inflammatory effects of taspine salts.
Vaisberg et al., Planta Medica 55: 140-143 (1988), reported that the hydrochloride salt of taspine is responsible for the wound-healing activity of Croton lechleri sap. However, the levels of significance for taspine hydrochloride as a wound healer, as reported by Vaisberg et al., are low.
Other materials, such as growth hormones, have been proposed for promoting the healing of wounds. However, such materials are generally prohibitively expensive, and there is no wound healing agent recognized medically that is available commercially. There thus remains a need in the art for effective and economical medicaments which can be utilized to accelerate the healing rate of wounds.